


Number One

by my_mad_fatuation



Series: Number One [1]
Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 07:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7158692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/my_mad_fatuation/pseuds/my_mad_fatuation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn is in a semi-popular band and Rae runs the number one fan-blog. What happens when Finn runs across it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Number One

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by this prompt: http://otpprompts.tumblr.com/post/140690222956/person-a-is-a-huge-fan-of-person-b-who-is-a-band

It was not a big deal. Everybody did it. It was just innocent curiosity.

Finn tried to remind himself of this as he sat sprawled on his couch with his laptop, Googling himself.

A year ago when he’d do this, there was only one search result that was actually him—just his band’s crappy website. Now there were thousands of results that were actually about him.

Ever since the band’s single “To Be Continued” hit the charts a few months back, they’d been blowing up. There were news articles and interviews and fan-sites now. He found it somewhat amusing, though a little overwhelming.

On one site, someone had made a whole bunch of animated GIFs of clips of their music video. One in particular had tons of comments—it was a close-up shot of him that panned down to his bass guitar.

He’d always been a bit uncomfortable about that shot, and was more so when he read the comments. A bunch of, “Move that bass out of the way!!!” kind of comments, or, “Look at those hands! I would let him do all sorts of things to me with those…”

Finnatics, they called themselves. The others in the band had their own fans as well. The drummer, Chop, had Choppers, and the guitarist, Archie, had Heartchies—which sounded kind of like “hard cheese;” he definitely had the worst fan name.

It was all a bit much. So why did Finn still do it? Why did he still look himself up when it was all bullshit articles and inappropriate fangirls? Maybe on some level he liked the attention.

Besides, he didn’t dislike the fans, by any means. Their enthusiasm was what paid his bills. Really, he was flattered that so many young women—and men—found him attractive, though some of them were _really_ young. Like, he-would-be-a-disgusting-criminal-if-it-were-reciprocal young. (Luckily it was never reciprocal.)

This time he ran across an article that was only peripherally about him and took a gander. It was about a fan-run blog that was becoming hugely popular. There were lots of fan blogs, though, so he wasn’t sure what made this one so noteworthy, until he checked it out.

It was basically a one-stop shop for up-to-date news, tour details, fan photos, fan art—it had more information than the band’s own website. It had useful links to all the band’s online presence and social media, as well as where to buy the album and merchandise. He wondered if they ought to be giving the moderator(s) a cut of everything, with the amount of work they were doing to promote the band.

“Thank you so much, guys!” read the most recent post. “Because of you, we made it to the number one Torchlight Monday fan blog on Buzzfeed! Thank you for your submissions, your comments, and your support this past year. And a special thanks to those of you who have been here since the beginning—what a ride it has been! Love you all to bits! To be continued… –Rae”

He read a few more posts and was impressed with the level of intelligence in them—not that there wasn’t gushing, because there was, but it was mediated with thoughtful observations and sensitivity. Some of the comments could get kind of gross, though, and some were downright hateful, but the mod always had a quipping comeback for them.

He thought it would be fun to leave a comment, to show the fans his appreciation. “Finn here,” he wrote. “Just want to say thanks for the support. This blog is great. Keep up the good work! xo”

Content with that, he got up to make a cup of tea before settling back onto his computer. He’d received a reply already.

“LOL,” read the comment from the moderator, Rae. “Some knobhead is pretending to be Finn fucking Nelson on here. Piss off!”

Well, that wasn’t what he was expecting. He considered replying but didn’t think it would do much good. People were going to believe what they wanted to believe.

He continued reading the blog, going back through the archives, and found some pretty interesting things. Images from their first ever photo shoot with their wannabe photographer buddy that used to be on their website ages ago. Fan drawings by some really talented artists. And even song analyses by the moderator, which not only analyzed song lyrics but also chord choices and rhythm—more thought went into analyzing the songs than ever went into writing them.

It was then that it hit him: the owner of this blog was really a fan. There were posts dating back way before “To Be Continued” was released, from back when they just had a couple tracks on their website and were performing in local bars. The amount of thought and effort this person put into maintaining the blog and enjoying the music reminded him of how he felt about his own favourite bands.

He particularly enjoyed the “About” section:

“This blog is dedicated to the greatest band of all time, Torchlight Monday. If you have been a fan since their _Black Eyes_ digital EP, you are welcome here. If you have been a fan since you heard “To Be Continued” on the radio, you are welcome here. If you have never heard of this band and landed here by mistake, you are welcome here. I hope you stick around and learn a bit more about this phenomenal group of artists.

“My name is Rae. I’m a 21-year-old university student and I run this blog in my spare time. It is a labour of love, and I appreciate all your help in keeping this blog great. Feel free to submit your photos, artwork, and stories any time! TLM_blog@gmail.com”

He completely lost track of time scrolling through posts. There was one post with a link to and excerpts from an interview he had done for an online magazine. The excerpts were all just answers to questions about the music, but some of the commenters on this post started talking about some of the other questions from the interview, particularly the ones about Finn’s personal life.

One of the questions was, “You’ve got a lot of female fans who are probably wondering, do you have a girlfriend?”

“No, I don’t have a girlfriend,” he had answered. (The article failed to mention how uncomfortable he had been with that question.)

Commenters were speculating:

“I bet he does have a girlfriend but he’s been told not to say anything so he doesn’t alienate fans.”

“No, it’s because he’s GAY obviously. I mean that in a good way.”

“If he has a girlfriend I will huNT HER DOWN AND KILL HER.”

But, thankfully, Rae stepped in with, “Let’s just let him have his private life to himself and enjoy the music. That’s why we’re really here.”

Rae seemed sensible about his or her fan-ness. (Finn wasn’t sure if Rae was a man or a woman because “Rae” sounded like a guy’s name but was spelled like a girl’s name.) (It didn’t matter anyway, s/he was cool.)

Finn wanted to send Rae a message saying how much he appreciated the blog, but didn’t want it to be taken as a prank. He supposed he could send a photo of himself right now to prove it was really him, but thought that might be weird.

Then he had a brilliant idea. He would tweet about the blog. At the very least, some of his followers who were unaware of the blog might be happy to have a new source of information. He couldn’t find Rae’s Twitter handle anywhere on the blog so he just posted a link to the site, saying what a great blog it was.

It got a bunch of likes and retweets fairly quickly, even though it was really late at night—or really early in the morning, depending how you look at it. Must be their American fans, though he didn’t think there were all that many.

At any rate, he figured he ought to get some sleep. He bookmarked the blog so he could come back to it again.

And he did.

He was somewhat surprised when he checked it the next day that the most recent post was a screenshot of his tweet from last night.

“So many of you submitted this,” Rae had written. “Thank you for bringing it to my attention. As some of you may know, I’ve been off Twitter for a couple of months due to harassment, so I appreciate when you share these lovely things with me. I guess we know Finn reads Buzzfeed! (Or whoever runs his Twitter account does. Haha!)”

Rae didn’t think that Finn ran his own Twitter account? True, he rarely posted, and it was usually just about touring dates, but it was him. Why did this person have such a hard time believing that Finn could actually be involved with his fanbase? He was a pretty down-to-earth guy.

He started to check the blog everyday. He particularly liked when fans would submit photos they’d taken with him, because he could remember nearly all of them, even some by name. He looked through the photos wondering if any of them were Rae—maybe they had met already—but all of them seemed to be submissions by other people.

He couldn’t figure out why he was so interested in learning more about the mysterious Rae. S/he seemed cool and clever and funny, and maybe a little mean, which Finn liked. In other circumstances, he thought they could be friends.

The more he followed the blog, the more he wished it could happen. Every reference Rae made to other music or films was right up his alley. He felt he had more in common with Rae than any of his real friends, anyway.

Was that pathetic? Yeah, that was pathetic. He had to stop thinking that way. Maybe he should stop visiting the blog everyday—cut it down to once a week? Or, like, maybe just once every day instead of refreshing every twenty minutes. He really had other things he should be doing anyway, such as rehearsing for their upcoming performances.

Okay, maybe just one more refresh and then he would get practicing.

When the page reloaded there was a new image. It was a photo of a young woman wearing the band’s latest t-shirt design. He couldn’t help but notice the way the logo was distorted by her chest—she was quite curvaceous. And, well, when he finally pried his eyes away from that area, he noticed that she had this cute punk-rock scowl on her face and was making the “rock on” hand gesture in an ironic way.

“Got my new TLM t-shirt in the mail today,” the caption read. “Totally love it. –Rae”

Holy shit, that was Rae? She was a girl. And she was cute. This cast all of Finn’s warm and fuzzy feelings about her in a new light. No, this was weird. He was starting to obsess over a girl he didn’t even know.

Though perhaps she obsessed over him as well. He knew she was a huge fan of the band; that was obvious. But he also noticed that the majority of the posts that weren’t about the whole group were about him individually. That could just be because she got more submissions about him, but it could be more than that. She didn’t call herself a “Finnatic,” fortunately, but it was possible she had a preference for him.

Okay, that was just egotistical thinking on his part. Women and girls could be fans of a band without having crushes on any of the guys in the band, right? And Rae didn’t really seem like the type. She was too cool for that sort of thing.

She was single, though, as far as he could tell. She always replied to comments in the evenings, which suggested she wasn’t going anywhere at night. He knew this because he also wasn’t going anywhere at night. (He hadn’t lied about not having a girlfriend.)

He couldn’t stop looking at her picture, though. It was like he had been sitting in front of one of those two-way mirrors, hearing someone else’s voice but only seeing himself, and now finally it was a window and he could see her too. Now if he could only get her to hear him…

The next couple of days were all fan submissions, until he refreshed one morning and there was a very excited text post.

“Guess what, you guys! I’m going to see TLM live in Peterborough next Friday! My mates and I just got our tickets! We are so excited! Hope to see some of you locals there! –Rae”

There were already several congratulatory comments, and one “OMG, I’m going too!”

For a second, Finn literally wished that he were going as well, before he remembered that, oh yeah, he was going. He wondered if she would be the type of person to try and meet the band after the show. On the one hand, she was a huge fan and would probably love to get autographs and a photo, but on the other hand she seemed really respectful of personal space and privacy.

But he didn’t want privacy from her. He wanted to meet her in person so he could tell her how great her blog was—she would have to believe him in person. And he wanted her to get her picture taken with him, and maybe he could even put his arm around her and—

Okay, this was getting weird. He had to stop thinking about her like that. He didn’t even know her. Sure, from her blog he could tell she was cool and clever and funny and considerate and pretty—oh, there he goes again, being weird.

But he didn’t know her and she certainly didn’t know him. A few awkward interviews weren’t enough to reveal the real him—the quiet, contemplative, lonely him. He had this image of being kind of cool, what with being in a band and all, but he didn’t feel that he lived up to it.

Which meant that even if she were secretly a “Finnatic,” all she liked was the image of him that had been created. Meanwhile, he felt he knew her in a more real way, because she seemed so open in her blogging. She had even posted about how she cried the first time she heard one of their newer songs.

Leading up to the Peterborough show, Rae posted more and more about how eager she was to go and how she would share photos and stories when she got back—maybe that meant she would get a picture with him. At any rate, he was going to make sure he greeted fans after the show in case she showed up, no matter how tired or grumpy he was.

He was nervous leading up to the show, though. The owner of the most popular fan blog was going to be there and would post about everything that happened. He had to be at his best.

The performance went well, however, and he didn’t fuck up too badly. He still wished he was a better bassist, but there wasn’t much he could do about that at this point.

He kept scanning the audience in case he could spot her, but he was under such bright lights he couldn’t see anything past the first row. He smiled uncomfortably as the girls in the front screamed at him. (None of them were Rae, of course.)

Afterwards, he and the lads hung around to sign things and take photos with some of their fans. One young woman asked him to autograph her chest, so he signed right below her clavicle—which ticked off Archie who then had to sign below that. Chop didn’t seem to mind signing lower than that, though.

Finn was in the middle of autographing someone’s CD—people still bought CDs? Wild—when he spotted a woman walking by who looked familiar.

“Rae?” he called out before he could stop himself.

The woman and her friends turned to look at him and she looked absolutely dumbfounded.

He quickly finished signing and thanked the fan in front of him and then waved Rae over.

She looked confused and pointed at herself, like she was asking, “Me?”

He nodded and gestured with his head. She excused her way through the small gathering of people in front of him.

“Did you just call me by name?” she asked.

“Your name is Rae, right?” he said.

She looked around skeptically. “Yeah… How do you…?”

“You run the fan blog, yeah?”

“I do…”

“I just wanted to say that I really love your blog and I think you’re doing a great job.”

Her face flushed. “Okay, thanks…”

“Can I get a picture with you?”

“Y-you want a picture with _me_?”

“Is that alright?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

He nudged Archie and handed him his phone. “Take our picture, mate.”

Archie appeared confused for a moment when he realized it was Finn’s own phone, but he took the photo anyway.

Finn couldn’t help but think about how nice and warm she felt next to him as he put his arm around her shoulders. He had to stop thinking that, though.

“D’you mind if I post this to Instagram?” he asked Rae when his phone was handed back to him.

“Um, sure, go ahead,” she said. “Though, if you don’t mind, could I get a photo of the three of you for the blog?”

“Yeah, no problem.” He grabbed Archie and Chop away from what they were doing so they could be in the photo.

Rae pulled a DSLR out of her bag—she was not messing around. “Thanks,” she said once she had got a couple of shots. She put her camera away and added, “Well, it was nice to meet you.”

“Wait,” he said, putting a hand on her arm. “Do you—I mean, can—Can I buy you a drink or summat?”

She looked confused but replied, “The bar’s closed.”

“Oh, right. Well, there’s booze back in my hotel room—“ He stopped himself when he realized how bad that sounded.

“Um, I’m not really that kind of girl—“

“No, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that! I just wanted to—I wanted to hang out with you a bit longer.” He rubbed his forehead with his palm. “I’m not saying this right—I’m not trying to get you back to my room for—I mean, not that I wouldn’t—No, I just mean I think that you’re cool and—“

“What makes you think I’m cool?” she said with a condescending laugh.

“I’ve been reading your blog for a while now, and I can tell. I think… I mean, I like you and I think we could be friends.” Oh, that sounded really dorky.

“You what?”

“Could—Could I maybe have your number?” he asked sheepishly. “So we could hang out next time I’m in the area and talk about music or whatever.”

“You want…my number?”

He nodded but realized how stupid that seemed. “Look, I understand if you don’t want to give out your number to some guy you just met, so I’m sorry—“

She put out her hand expectantly. “You can have it if you want.”

He handed her his phone and she input her number before returning it.

“Okay, so can I ask you a question?” she said, folding her arms. “Do you actually have a girlfriend or not?”

He smiled a little. “Not yet…”

 


End file.
